TechCrunch using Wordpress certificate for SSL

Here are two contemporaries and WP.com VIP customers that do have their own certs:

https://recode.net/

https://gigaom.com/

Here are two that don't:

https://qz.com

https://pando.com/

And one that redirects you from https

https://time.com

Is that last one the best experience if you don't have a cert?

Not the best endorsement for Wordpress VIP as a service, though. For what they're paying (and for a service which is specifically targeted at hosting on a non-wordpress.com domain), I'd expect at least that they support SNI to get the correct cert for browsers that support it, if not dedicated IPs so that SSL works everywhere.

Sending a *.wordpress.com cert along with an "enterprise" service is sloppy and doesn't really inspire confidence in their product.

(Although it does seem to be possible for at least some Wordpress VIP customers-- time.com has a valid cert (but redirects to HTTP), and fivethirtyeight.com has fully working HTTPS. So maybe it's actually techcrunch's issue?)

Well, they sort of have to be accessed by unencrypted HTTP, their HTTPS certificate gives a huge warning. Any site doing journalism needs to have their SSL setup correctly if they care about the privacy of their readers.

In that case, would they not spent 10 bucks on an SSL cert and redirect to plain?

Yeah, says that at the bottom of the page.

HTTPS Everywhere has a whitelist of sites and only forces HTTPS on those sites. It doesn't force HTTPS on every server that merely listens on port 443.